 Good evening, and thank you Okay, be heard. Thank you. Thank you Rick and Doris for those introductions You probably have not heard of the man going to quote now, but you should his name is Gula-Bam Hake-Meta How many people have heard it? Yeah, very few of you He came out of the statement just this week, and I want to give you this word for work. He said In Afghanistan where he leaves the Islamist fighters were making a comeback The solution is to have a new government And it must include all sides in the country Which means his people too And in addition to that by the by Quote the defeat of the United States is near and quote Now if we were Here in 2001 you would have every right to laugh me off the stage Who is this guy? Nobody's heard of him He's claiming that his people ought to be running Afghanistan And that the defeat of the world's most powerful nation Not just today, but in the history of mankind That our defeat is imminent And yet when you look at the facts It looks as if he's right He wants two things, right? He wants the His people in the government. Well, that is what they have The Taliban and their Islamist allies who seek a totalitarian vision of Islam as a political ideal Are in control of large parts of Afghanistan and they're encroaching on Pakistan They don't just have Random checkpoints. They have a shadow government, which means they have established courts You have a divorce you want to take care of you go to them. You want to have your land dispute sorted you go to them They are running in effect their own state within Afghanistan The view of slavery how powerful they have become they're forcing their law There is lames law in these parts by force in 2001 and 2006 at a five-year period There were a total of 30 suicide bombings over five years, which you if you I mean, they're terrible. It shouldn't be a single one But if you average it out What's that? 60 year right In the first six months of last year There were 1200 The number of Americans who have died in the first 11 months We'll just I guess up until today of this year is 298 Which is nearly double the worst year ever which was last year And if you look at the graph of the number of casualties, it is like a hockey stick just keep climbing up like that And you know what we expect from the Islamists in Afghanistan is they take over and they enforce their You know familiar rules women are not allowed out They must be covered up. You know the whole panoply of these medieval and barbaric customs But I think what's most symbolic of what's happened In Afghanistan in the last few years is the return of the so-called morality police If you remember during the Taliban's first Spell and power they used to have these guys running around in pickup trucks And they jump out of the pickup truck and they see someone who was not being Islamic enough or who was behaving in a way that they disapproved of and that person would be flogged or they would be Dragged to prison or they would have a wall toppled on top of them Or they would be hung up in the from the nearest lampposts where they had lampposts This is what Afghanistan is turning into women are voluntarily applying the veil In self-protection. I mean, this is how bad it's gotten And you may have heard in the news that the Taliban are fighting their way back and that this is a huge problem They've gotten as close as bombing the capital city Kabul So if you hear news reports, they usually show you a map of Afghanistan And they you know the south is a lot of trouble and the border areas of Afghanistan is a lot of trouble They're at the capital and they've got a chokehold on the main artery Between the two major cities Kabul and Kandahar Now I tell you all it's not because I know this is the afghan appreciation society or the afghan expatriates group No, I mean our main concern here is because Afghanistan was a launching path to 911 And everything that we have in terms of open information about The threat emanating from that part of the world is that it's becoming the same thing over again Just listen to the former head of the CIA In a speech last year He said that every single plot that his organization is tracking Finds its way back to the afghan Pakistan border area where the Taliban have a star vote And if you look at recent plots like the one in london 2005 This is way before the Taliban were as powerful as they are today and then subsequent plots These guys train them. They get all kinds of Funding and propaganda. This is the new epicenter for the jihad islamist war of conquest I've told you what one of these islamist leaders believes is in the offing He believes that his group is going to win and that the americans are going to lose What has been the response from our people? Well, hillary glinton would like us to sort between the big t taliban and the little t taliban They're good guys among them And we just have to figure out a way to peel them apart and the ones who are good and really want To be peaceful and put down their arms. Well, you know, we can win them over So essentially they're just potential friends that we just have to work a lot harder to win over Well, you might say she's a she's a kook, you know, secretary of the state. What does she know? But you know, just listen to one of the mainstream commentators who as far as I know is a has a reputation for being non Non ideological or non anything. He's very familial flavor. He writes for newsweek if you can Infer from that. His name is for reads akariya. He's a big deal, right? And you probably know who's puts out these big best-selling books He's recent statement on a situation In his view, it's inevitable that what we have to do is just and these are his words We have to buy rent or borrow the loyalty of the afghan taliban Take your pay to buy it Which means you get a lasting relationship rent it means for as long as you keep paying borrow means you get some kind of leverage on them Talk about long-range thinking that's definitely a solution. Huh? I mean, that's what we want to do right pay off these people And this is creative thinking this is apart from the people who tell you that there's no whole right These are the people with solutions And of course, I would try to return to our administration because after all they have the last say on what we do And what is obama's position? Well, you know, we have to wait until tomorrow to find out the specific plan he has in store But you know given previous statements, I think we can fairly Safely say that what we're going to have presented to us is not a plan for victory But a plan for something that is face saving and that will at least put the problem away for as long as it takes to get Reelected something rather short term and ultimately I argue this is one of the things that we say in the book self-destructed Where do I get all this? Well read the newspaper But the other thing he said speaks directly to this. He was asked just a few months ago What's your view of what we can accomplish in Afghanistan? And he said this I'm always worried about using the word victory And the quote has the scare quotes. I'm not just adding that I'm always worried about using the word victory Because you know it invokes this notion of emperor hero veto in world war two Coming down and signing a surrender to macArthur So for all of those who are benighted enough to expect that the commander in chief would set out as a goal The defeat of our enemy For those people he has this message do not expect victory in any shape or form Which I would think is a heartening message for people where it's supposed to be finding Now I've used a lot of my time to talk about gas and And there's a lot more to say but I want to touch on one other area where there's a lot of grief coming our way And that is iran I'll just leave you with one headline which you probably caught over the weekend after months of hand-wringing and agonizing attempts to reach out our hand through iran Because as you know, obama has said that if iran just agrees to unclench its fist We will offer it our hand in friendship Now if you can if you can sum up that kind of metaphorical Talk which I think underplays the reality of how bad iran really is I hope you'll ask me about that What has that bought us in the last 11 months? Well There was a deal that cut that what in october right they all met and they had a deal finally we got iran to the table This was progress Uh, no, sorry. We're not interested in that deal. You know what we're gonna we have a different plan Instead of agreeing to this cockamamie idea where we get the iranians get nuclear fuel They send it over to russia and in other countries and they bring it back It's you know foreign policy as it as constructed by root goldberg instead of that You know, we're not we're not interested in your your hand in friendship. We're gonna we're gonna open 10 new nuclear facilities which would give us the capacity For something like 500,000 centrifuges, which means the equivalent of 160 nuclear bombs worth of fuel Not in 10 years per year In a single year now You know, who knows how long it might take them to build that many centrifuges if they ever do But this is their attitude the attitude is You can come groveling on your knees as much as you want. We're gonna keep spinning in your face and slapping you down And we're gonna keep curing your people because that's our goal You know when we sing the iranians tell their Friday sermon followers death to America they mean it Now I hope I've thoroughly depressed you Because I want to just turn to the final point in my presentation And that is to raise a question that uh, I will touch on and my colleague will Expand on and then you can explore in the q&a and that is how on earth did we get to this point? You know, the united states is by every measure economic military technological Nobody yet outpaces us And yet where we've got this situation afghanistan that practically everyone in our culture believes is a lost cause And in which the enemy believes it is winning We've got the world's most active state sponsor of islamic terrorism Iran according to the state department not just in the last five years not just in iraq not just in the palestinian territories But for the last 30 years This regime is not only in business Meaning it's still in power It's still murdering its own people in the streets and taking that war across the borders into yemen and sari arabia And presumably it's going to continue taking that war Throughout the europe and eventually here That regime is the one setting the terms of debate in this whole nuclear standoff, which is There are a few words that can describe This regime is not only in power is it feels itself and is in fact stronger That is a in my view a Damning indictment of our foreign policy Eight years after 9 11 and one of the leading state sponsors of the islamist movement Is still around and is gloating I think I want to tell you about two factors that I think are significant in understanding how we got here I think Alex is going to touch on some of the Causes and you're all going to talk a little bit more about how we can get out of this mess So just two two points in closing In any given war You have to answer one question At least one Who are you fighting? And then what are you going to do to stop them? Those are those seem like obvious. They seem like elementary school kind of questions But you would be surprised at how many wrong answers and evasive answers and misinformed Corrupt answers that have been given in the last eight years and prior to that because one of the points we make in the book is that Our problems do not begin with 9 11. They began long before that And I think the situation with Iran just highlights how badly we've done on this score meaning who the enemy is So that's one point. I want to leave you with And on the second question What are you going to do about it? What do you consider to be the right thing to do in response and self-defense? I think the afghanistan situation is a model of what went wrong in nattergon Because and this is a point I developed in several of the chapters if you look at the empirical data What was done in in afghanistan and in iraq, by the way It is shocking Not because of how aggressive america has been which is the standard line not because of how stupid our forces have been All of that is bunk The truth is that our forces were were abused by our politicians. They were made they were put into combat And not and then the problem wasn't they were under staffed or under equipped It was that they were prevented from fighting to win. They were given the wrong kinds of orders Orders though are that flow from certain moral ideas And these have been effect crippled to war in afghanistan and I'll tell you more about that if you're interested in q day As I said, it's in the book. So these two issues Who are you fighting and what are you willing to do? What are you? What do you consider to be moral in war? these are the core two issues And and these are policy issues and are operational strategic in any meaningful sense And that is where we failed so This is where we are and I think these are some of the main reasons for it. I'm going to turn it over now to alex to develop this further Interestingly enough yesterday. I was in dc visiting my family And my girlfriend wanted to see the sites in dc So I took her by the various memorials including the new core of war two memorial and I mean I just have to read you the two quotes that that stuck out to me and I think it'll be obvious Why they stuck out and and how relevant they are one is from the beginning of the war one is from the end of the war Roosevelt's Declaration of war has announced to the american people that he's going to declare war and he says very frankly no matter How long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion the american people and their righteous might will win through to absolute victory absolute victory Four years later against some of the most fearsome military enemies of all time Douglas MacArthur could say this and the title of the The exhibit is the war's end Today the guns are silent a great tragedy has ended A great victory has been won The sky's no longer rain death The seas bear only commerce Men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight The entire world is quietly at peace How many years out do any of us see anything like that remotely anything like that Being said in this country by anyone President bush explicitly said although he was chastised and tried to recap that this is not a war that you can win Barack Obama doesn't like hero Hito as a model I like hero Hito as a model so I mean all of the examples ilan brought up. I think I think are perfect In many ways to illustrate what's going on and I think it's really helpful To to step back and to realize how abnormal this is because when we read the newspaper every day It's treated as well. This is normal So you read the op-ed pages they comment on certain issues the news stories cover certain issues you think Well, this is this is what's newsworthy. It's being handled in a certain way. There's one position. There's another position That's that's pretty much All there is to say about it And yet this is clearly not the case with what's going on now. There's no talk whatsoever of You know of us being able to walk upright in a sunlight world There's no talk whatsoever of us being free From threats and just take take uh afghanistan I mean what is obama going to possibly say That is going to accomplish anything as far as the lives and freedom of americans go Nothing, but what's even worse is that that issue is not even on the table There's no expectation that he meet that standard in a speech Whereas can you imagine being f f dr giving a speech and not explaining how You know every single japanese necessary to be exterminated until he reached the goal of americans being safe It's it's just completely incomprehensible So there's something very warped about uh the discussion of foreign policy today And I think that uh is a good segue to the importance of this book because We're selling a book in a sense. I mean we're here here promoting a book and we're promoting an institute the iron rand institute in our Public outreach branch the iron rand central. What makes us, you know, what is it on? Passover that's what makes this night different from all the nights. Well, what makes this book different from all of their books Well, and and there is something it's not that ilan just decided to to add his name to the Hundreds and hundreds of people who have written on 9 11 in the war And it's aftermath and I think this goes to what what the iron rand institute does which is we are a philosophical Organization and iron rand was a novelist and a philosopher And a couple decades ago. This is also a coincidence. She went to west point just like barack obama will unfortunately be doing Tomorrow and she gave a speech called philosophy who needs it and in that speech She argued that the single most practical thing in the world Is to think about philosophy and philosophical issues Which is most of you take a philosophy class in college is not the message you get And the reason she held this is because philosophy is a science that studies the fundamental questions of human life Questions that apply to everyone in every place at every time questions Like what is the purpose of your life? What kind of goals should you set? How should you go about achieving them? How should you go about finding the answers to all of those questions? What methods should you use and all of those questions are directly relevant to the issue of war Which is what I think makes this this book distinctive that it takes a philosophical approach to the issue of When to go to war why to go to war how to go to war and applies it in particular with respect to these issues so ilan highlighted the issue of Naming the enemy and then figuring out how to defeat it And it's no accident that this book is overwhelmingly focused on that issue And that other books you read will treat that issue very tangentially and vaguely and not even particularly care about those answers But if you're taking a philosophical approach, you have to you have to ask the fundamental questions What is going and a real fundamental question of foreign policy is what is necessary to protect the rights and freedom of Americans from foreign threats And that leads to many questions and we'll be discussing them tonight One question just to focus on as an example is What is the who is the enemy? And again, it's it's noteworthy That the cultural discussion on this issue is very very warped Who is I mean who's the enemy in afghanistan? It is a big t taliban little t taliban are the people in afghanistan I mean we went to war in iraq were we against iraq was it for iraq you know I know and I just listed today the number of of names of the enemy that I've heard given by prominent people so This is not inclusive all inclusive, but the enemy is the terrorists. It's terrorists the axis of evil It's evil doers. It's haters. It's hijackers of a great religion. It's rogue states. It's al-qaeda It's shout shadowy networks of terrorists. It's islamo fascists. It's tyranny You know what what exactly and what do any of those mean and what are their implications and action? What would it mean to defeat any of these so-called enemies? These are the kinds of issues that need to be thought through clearly And and just to indicate it and hopefully you'll read the book and and ask questions to to get more elaboration on this issue But in our view the enemy we call it islamic totalitarian And it's important to note that it has kind of three characteristics that it's a state-supported militant and ideological movement So it's it's a movement whose express mission is to politically impose islam You know an era muslim world and the rest of the world through militant action And it's crucial that it's state-supported because this has major implications for which states we go after one You know the major state we argue that's that's absolutely necessary to go after is Iran and just There's a lot to say about how to come to this conclusion It's not self-evident so it needs to be argued for and that's part of the reason why you write a book and not just Talk about it for a couple minutes But it's it's relevant to to contrast I think how how to really think about these issues which with how it's done conventionally And I have a quote here from uh, paul krogman who's a very prominent new york times columnist He was writing about how the worst thing possible would be for us to think that iran was a threat that we should go to war with So he said Iran had nothing whatsoever to do with 9 11 In fact, the iranian regime was quite helpful to the united states when it went after al-qaeda and its taliban allies in afghanistan So this is the view if you weren't directly involved in the atrocities of that day Then supposedly you're not you know, we shouldn't go after you but where where is that written? And how does that make any sense if you think about it philosophically the standard is who is an actual threat to the united states And in uh, the first two chapters of the book, you know, the law has excellent essays which trace the development of The iranian threat to the united states from the 1979 hostage taking today and showing that that for decades This has been a militant enemy that has been attacking us that to this day Has a death decree against anyone in america or elsewhere associated with the publication of salman rushdie's book The satanic verses and they say it's irrevocable I mean any decent u.s. Foreign policy would say well then your lives are irrevocable And you know kill the iranian government officials responsible for that kind of thing So it's the kind of um Of philosophical thinking Kind of thinking that looks over that looks at the facts wide range and long range to come to the proper conclusions about What's your basic policy be? What are the enemies how to defeat them? I think that is completely essential today And that's why I think this book is really timely and and for more I'll pass it on to your own Thanks, Alex Thank you guys. It uh, it it has been a pleasure Both in your living room, and I think this is this is even more fun um So we heard that we're not winning this war indeed. We're losing it. Um As ilan, I think demonstrates The uh, the taliban and uh, the islamic the tolerans of afghanistan are ever more powerful Uh, not only can you project the future in which they are part of the government The u.s. Government projects the future in which the taliban is part of that government Not only the taliban projects that future um You know, you rock in my view even though it seems to be pacified is is uh, You know will I think in the future? Be shown to be a satellite of the iranians at least as long as the shia is controlled iraq Iran developing nuclear weapons with nothing in sight. Um, you know, uh Colleagues who took all the radical clerics in the middle east communicating with army officials in the united or army Offices in the united states are then going shooting shooting rampages, but we don't call that terrorism. We call that You know, he was eventually something not good so Terrorism is all around us islamic to teleterianism as the ideology motivating that terrorism is alive and well and thriving thriving israel You know in in the gaza in west vanguard hamas It is thriving in lebanon with the khizmallah. It is thriving with the muslim brotherhood in egypt and jordan and syria As we said, it's thriving in iraq in iran in yemen. I mean everywhere Eight years after 9 11 and really 9 11 is somewhat our official date. I mean why 9 11? Is that really when the islamic to teleterians first struck us? No, I mean uh, today is is uh, is 30 years and one month From what I view as the starting date of this war november 4th 1979 Which was a day that your embassy was taken in tehran The day in which the islamic to teleterians first attacked the united states They have been attacking us constantly since But we view each incident as an isolated little event, you know by some nuts who You know who wasn't inspired by anything just happened to be shooting and there were americans in the way And they got killed just like the fort hood accident accident, right? Incidents And therefore nobody used us as a war and 9 11 According to the people in power today in the united states was just an act of criminals It wasn't it wasn't a part of anything bigger. It wasn't a part of the war. So Before you can't win a war You have to first identify as a war And I don't think anybody's done that even bush with the war tears. It didn't truly identify this as a war We have for many years Going back to the mid 90s. The institute has as called this a war Second you have to identify the enemy. So a war against kuhn and as alex said It's like a terrorism Terrorism is a tactic Terrorism is it would be like identifying after col harvest saying we're gonna fight a war against kamikaze pilots Right terrorism is just one tactic the radius of building nuclear weapons. That's not terrorism. So they're not part of this war So you have to identify who you're fighting against and we're fighting against an ideology the ideology of islamic Totalitarianism. This is an ideologically based war It is freedom liberty loving People of the world against islamic totalitarianism. That is the war unless we define it that way There's no water work. There's no water fight. There's just no water fighting That's why they're floundering all over the place because they haven't defined the energy And then third we have to have a path to victory Now people say this is complicated because you know, they're all these terrorist groups and they're all isolated and Al-Qaeda struck us and how do we know who is the islamic totalitarianism really the enemy or is it the enemy? It's complicated. You know, you can't you can't fight it like you did world war two But that is absurd Because once you identify that it is an ideology that you're fighting then it's easy Make a list of all the groups and all the countries that are here to this ideology And do what we did to the Germans and Japanese in World War two So there those would include groups like Al-Qaeda certainly But it would include Hamas and Hezbollah and was the brotherhood and islamic jihad And all of those groups are part of the enemy and therefore Need to be destroyed Not negotiated with Not evacuate settlements in order to give them their own state Now withdrawing in order to give them power destroyed And by whatever means necessary just like we destroyed japan we destroyed Germany You know that's a win and by the way You know the other objects I feel whenever I say destroy people go you can't do that That's really upset and then you know, what would you billion Muslims will be our enemies? Well, how many german enemies do we have today? After we flattened the dresser How many japanese enemies do we have today after we killed hundreds of thousands of japanese civilians? Including using two nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki No, no in no japanese enemies. No german enemies. It's funny how groups that way when you win You win and the enemy goes away And you win by decisively feeding them Okay, so you list all those groups you have to destroy them But then is it the case that all those groups Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban Do they just exist without any support from any state? Well, no, it's quite obvious that it's not the case The Taliban, Al-Qaeda, most of the Sunni groups get massive support from Saudi Arabia All the Shia groups get support from Iran and Iran of course is much more open-minded about these things than the Saudis. They support the Shia, the Sunni groups as well. So they support everybody across the board So you've got two state supporters of terrorism. You've got the Saudis and the Iranians and of course the Saudis are best friends in this war Months out, you know, a couple of months after 9-11 The head of the Saudi war family or one of the heads of the world was at the ranch in Texas You've got a big old hug from George Bush. This is in the middle of a war This is the enemy And yet We're the best friends And Iranians, well you've heard the story about what's going on with the Iranians So why and I'll be brief and I encourage Why is it so pathetic? I mean and to call this why anything but pathetic is I don't think there's any other other way to describe it And I really think this has to do with what Alice talked about. This has to do with philosophical ideas This has to do with what's changed in our culture If if uh George Bush had given his speech that he gave after 9-11 Right after Paul Harlan people would have been in the streets demanding his impeachment We all thought it was a tough speech But you go back and read You go back and read his speech from 9-11 where he talks about You know, most of the Muslims in the world are good people. They're nice. They're friendly This is not really that kind of a war. Imagine if you are saying most shintoos Are nice peaceful people. We're not against shintoism I mean, he would have been laughed out of office Um, imagine if everybody out in coverage this all to go shopping After Paul Harlan, which is what George Bush did in his January 2002 speech before congress Which is just like normal nothing's happened. We'll take care of it. Don't want to be happy That's not Taking going to war taking a threat seriously. So what's happened with us? People leave all that aside the politicians do irrelevant. We are the problem What's happened to us that we listen to George Bush and thought he was a tough guy Because our standards have been so watered down Well, I think that One of the things that happened to us is there's not so much eculturalism We have come to uh To accept the idea That everybody's equal everybody's good everybody's the same that we should apologize for american greatness and american success And that bush was kind of good because it kind of sounded a little bit like a cowboy at least for to the european here He sounded like a cargo because he was more self-assertive. So we thought wow Because self-assertion is bad We can't be self-assertive about western civilization about capitalism about liberty about freedom You know because slaves You know we've been taught through the multiculturalism debate that slavery is the same Who are we to say western civilization is any better than anybody else? You know, uh stanley fish was not bad right after 9 11 Stanley fish was the dean of the humanities at the university of Illinois chicago and he said look From the terrorist perspective, they were doing the right thing. They were the good guys Who are we to say that they're evil? We can say we don't like them because they're killing us, but we can't say they're evil There's no standard There's no standard Those standards are gone. There's no right and wrong There's just this fuzziness of sameness everything's the same everything is on the same level And I think that has its origin In an ethic in in going back to the philosophical and an ethic that is dominating this country and is dominating more and more of this country and is really You know over the last hundred years seeped into every aspect of this culture and that is the notion that Pursuing your own self-interest being a servant claiming that you're the good guys Knowing that there is something something that is good is bad is wrong It's either the whole individualism the whole What made america great that's self assertion Is wrong and goodness is being nice to people even your enemies turning out of the cheek Now being friendly the meek children have a dose afterward after all we should take care of the meek You're the neighbor's keeper and the palestinians are our neighbors after all and we should keep them This otherism this focus on what's good for other people not on what's good for ourselves That is creeped into our culture and it destroys our policy and destroys our health care debate It destroys our economy. It's everyone this You know we call it altruism other is the idea that's self-sacrifice that's self-denial Is the moral ideal that is ideal and if you're self-assertive if you pursue your own self-interest If you're doing what's good for you if america goes out and fights for its values There's something if uncomfortable about that. There's just something wrong about that. That's selfish. That's self-interested and those who become Bad words But self-sacrifice You know doing what's good for the iraqis, you know I we called we called the iraq war very early from from really the first weeks of the war We call it the social services work We went to iraq not to beat an enemy Not to destroy an enemy But to bring them sewers and schools and electricity And mostly public democracy so that they could elect a she-right or she-eyed government to rule over them We went to war and you can tell you know names are important who you identify as the enemy's important names are important You remember the name of of the war in europe? There was an operation, you know free america or america asserting itself american self-defense It was operation iraqi freedom We went to war 5,000 american You know young men and women died in that war for iraqi freedom not a lot of safety You don't fight a war like that if you're concerned about american safety You don't drive food packages and i've got a sound while you're driving bombs if what you care about is the safety of americans But you can't do that anymore. You have to care for your neighbor You have to take care of the poor afghanians and while you're standing up to understand now What is the goal of the obama administration right now? Is it victory over the enemy? What was the goal of the bushing administration? Was it victory or no? We want to bring the democracy. We're worried about the credibility of the president of afghanistan Whether there's too much corruption or not who cares We should be in afghanistan For one reason and one reason only To destroy our enemy to destroy any threats in the united states To beat them not to bring them to good life not to worry about who their president is I don't give a damn what cause that is or isn't the will be or could be I want a taliban and i'm kind of finished That's it. That's always good If you see an athlete that says The standard of morality of self-sacrifice in the world being of others including one's enemies Cannot tolerate that self-assertion And that is I think what we bring to the debate that's different and why you'll hear statements like that from me And and the people up here that you won't hear from other speakers We believe in american self-sacrifice We believe in an american farm policy has one purpose and one purpose only And that is to defend the lives and property of american citizens That's it and that comes directly from ayman's philosophy and ethics Of rational self-interest And the long term if we're going to win this war if this country Is going to be successful in its future if it's going to overcome the economic crisis the political crisis and the farm policy crisis It's going to have to require A philosophical ethical revolution not just tinkering with policy here and there So thank you all and we'll open it up to questions Question is is obama muslim is this obama the islamic enemy in the white house? Well No, it was that easy or simple No, because you know obama is really really really bad But so's everybody else I mean obama's worse than them, but so's everybody else. There's nothing obama is not some muslim implant Who's gonna who's gonna destroy america from the within obama's an american implant the problem is here The problem is us We get the politicians we deserve. There's nothing about obama. We didn't know before the election that is materialized Um, but there was nothing special about bush. Bush got us into this position He didn't win the one of pretty stuff. He didn't win the one you are He didn't you know He was the one who the first president in american history to declare that the palestinians had had their own state You know He helped the hamas get a gossip like personal Israel to involve from the from the gossip strip and You have democracy right the whole idea of democracy. How does hamas get into power because 56 percent of palestinians voted for them to get into power People forget the fruits of democracy That occurred in among the palestinian authority. So, you know, there's nothing Yes, again, obama's worst city is undercut the city makes it in a sense. He makes the the choices that we have more real and But this is a much deeper problem than anyone Anyone president or anyone individual or anyone political party. This is a problem in american culture We're not demanding victory. Well, why are people marching in washington right now for obama's the problem? Why are we waking up and marching in washington and demanding that You know, we the women of glasinana bring the troops home We're the problem I just want to add one thing to that I agree if it were that simple, we would just remove him from office. Well, I think there I think his answer bears on this fully, but let me add that In america and in europe especially what we did see is not people marching in the streets demanding victory But people marching in the streets in a defense of any bullets flying They're crying that we had no right to defend ourselves Or to demand now they're going to be marching for withdrawals all over the place regardless of what the consequences might be So I think I agree with your point that there's definitely A cultural issue and I wanted to amplify one thing that you said In many ways, you know, you can put a lot of this on the president bush because the way he conducted the war The big focus of the book is bush the two terms of president george w bush But you must take a broader perspective on this because just as nine level wasn't In the materials as the starting point bush wasn't the starting point of all went wrong The the big failure That we've had has been ongoing and multiplied since at least 1970 not and there's a case to be made for it Even before that when the islamist movement was just emerging. And so what you have is jimmy carter democrat ronald reagan republicans george w h bush republicans bill clinton And each of them and this is one thing I I argue in the book with A lot of evidence they all have probability So I don't think it's it's as simple as well. We can just we just need to evict the democrats of liberals more generally from power And we you know expose their flaws. We need to expose their flaws in their irrational policy But we have to be just as we have to bring just so much scrutiny on the policies of other Presidents including the ones on the right or stensibly on the right because one of the big To me it I come from the United Kingdom to me one of the impressive things about the american rights being its tradition of being tough on foreign policy And the more I study american foreign policy the more I find that that's a minority I mean, it isn't true. I wish it were true, but it's not so I think there's a lot of blame to share unfortunately next question all right Start with this in part because a lot of the work I do is the history of of oils I think there's a lot of misunderstanding as far as Outside of to what extent oil influences or foreign policy particular oil having nations So first of all If you take a bomb or anyone else in the past 30 years, it's very tempting to look at the results Which are horrific and to then suppose that there must be some conspiracy behind these results But it's not the case at all And the way to realize that is to look at the arguments for the policy is that led to the results and the arguments are very conventional for example Democracy hasn't in the pure sense of unlimited majority rule is a good thing or we are a brother's keeper Or terrorists are just you know a fringe of hijacked great religion and their stateless shadowy networks So these are it's it's completely an intellectual battle the policies that are being implemented are being implemented Implemented in broad daylight using Ultimately philosophical premises that we have been taught and internalized from a young age Iran mentioned the idea of altruism It is placing others before self which is a major thing that we expose in many policies Including the whole conception of a welfare war in Iraq and a welfare war in Afghanistan We show how this is really Underlying so much so all of these things are either in broad daylight Or if you you can look under the arguments and see beliefs that you and others hold Underlying so in terms of what house that so the idea that Saudi Arabia has any sort of fundamental Influence over this has has no truth whatsoever. If you just look at the history of our conduct with regard to Oil-possessing regimes it does bear on the current conflict, but in the exact opposite way most people presuppose Starting in 1901 You had a western involvement in Persia and around 1930 70s started having western involvement in Saudi Arabia And many other nations in between and there's a consistent pattern, which was that the nations in question made Sort of ironclad contracts with oil developers who discovered oil at great time and expense in the case of Saudi Arabia Took 13 years and they thought there was no oil there at the time that the entire Treasury of Saudi Arabia could be carried on the back of a camel So you you have an idea of the upgrade of standard of living that these oil companies were bringing In any case they had these ironclad Contracts that western nations had promised to enforce namely Britain enforcing the original Persian oil contract In persia And what happened was over the oil companies made heroic discoveries against all odds And the western governments renounced their obligation as soon as as You know what later became Iran threatened nationalization in the 30s And this set off a pattern that would continue throughout the 20th century Which is that oil that would that morally and by contract Belonged to western companies was stolen and nationalized by thuggish regimes that we had every military ability to defeat But that for reasons of cowardice and ultimately moral ideas were we the strong thought it was wrong to hurt the poor Saudis Or the poor Iranians were for those reasons We demonstrated cowardice and refused to claim what was rightfully the property of of britain's and americans And because we did that we had a legacy that that made possible The shot who was who was bad not because he was bad for iranis because he was horrific to the united states only trumped by homemade in both respects But the entire so a lot of what even set the context for 1979 for which is the focus of the book was Our appeasement of the era world So the idea that that they're somehow pulling the strings in their favor is absurd I mean morally we let them pull the strings and anyone else who attacks us pull the strings so thanks I just want to add to that because you do what you raise in part of your question was a concrete solution And we certainly need one and One of the things I tried to do in the last chapter is spell out Step by step what that would look like and there are lots of ways we could solve the problem. I definitely want to Impress the point There's one thing you take away from tonight is that as bad as things are The point is to work towards a solution. We've left to all of how bad it is We it is a means for an end. We don't stand how we've got here in order to get out of it So please remember the first word of the tide of winning the unwinnable And so as I said, I refer you to that chapter for a fuller explanation Let me just touch on two points that bear on this It is true and this is to Agree with you on it. There's a cultural problem of which our foreign policy is one symptom For sure. There's a bigger problem and foreign policy just reflects it And we certainly need to change the culture's ideas so that they're more american I mean one of the reasons people flocked to this country for hundreds of years is because this was the land of Opportunity freedom and prosperity for those who earned it. I know that's why I came here I know this is what attracted you and so many other people who are immigrants to this country We need to be more like that and that means a culture that's more individualist takes Capitalism seriously and defends it as opposed to selling it off Now that is a big task and that's one of the projects that our organization is involved with our our mission is To affect change in the culture at that level But that means taking on issues one by one and then the one that this book focuses on is our policy So to zoom in on that issue I think there are a couple of things we can do that are concrete The first one is to declare in the kind of language and the kind of rhetoric I mean it that we heard Alex read these quotes from world war two. We need to have an orientation to the problem that puts american interests first And not just first in a series but first period nothing else And that has far reaching implications for what we do on the ground Do you drop islamic compliant food? Packages with peanut butter and and dry crackers for a kerosene on november 15 2001 No Do you send as many people in to destroy the enemy as is necessary? Yes But so there's definitely concrete implications now in the book one of the things I try to do is to take Not just Iran not just the nuclear issue as important as it is and not just afghanistan or i take them all And i lay out a sequence of events that I think we could follow And it doesn't have to be all of them, but it could be we need to some of them are necessary And this begins with defeating the enemy your arm has been telling you that it's an ideology It's an ideology led by particular states and I would name Iran as the chief leader of this movement I refer you to the book for the fuller argument. Saudi Arabia is a financier and an ideological well spring but in terms of actually putting people on the ground with expertise in bomb making with expertise in in Weapons and training it is Iran by far beyond any other competitor in the field The starting point the road to victory as the final chapter is titled register Iran that's the starting point you need to defeat the regime and In not merely Retard its nuclear program by a few years, which is what a lot of people would tell you in terms of a military response That is not enough because even if they never have nuclear weapons They're enough of a threat as they are Their tentacles reach far and wide and that has to be stopped The reason the big Iran is not merely its history of aggression over 30 plus years It is a central role as the inspiration for this movement I'll give you just one anecdote Iman is a weary. He's number two in al-Qaeda, right? He's You know, he's kind of the ideas guy and bin Laden is the operations kind of mastermind in the sense of He's the charismatic one gives you a flavor Now Iman is a weary in 1979 was the leader of a group called al-jiha in Egypt And when the Iranian revolution happened when ayatollah Khomeini brought an Islamic republic into being this sent real Blast waves across the Middle East and one of the people who was affected by this was awiri He looked at Khomeini and he realized that the world was different now If Iran can exist if the Islamist revolution can overcome the more powerful forces of the Shah and which was backed by washington if they can win Then nothing's really standing in our way. So in kind of a macro level of being inspired for that revolution and then in concrete specific things that they did like they mimic the Khomeini use tape cassette tapes if you remember what those are to propagate his message in Iran So they said well, that's what we should do and you know In the months after the revolution in Egypt, which is not exactly a theocracy It's considered fairly modern and fairly moderate and fairly friendly They were placards of our Dahl Khomeini of street courts So there's this big wave of inspiration in 79 and it really empowered the Islamic totalitarians Who later became parts of al-qaeda because Zawiri's organization blended with al-qaeda and then the other groups and splinter groups I won't bore you with all that detail, but this the The theme is that Iran has been an intellectual inspiration It has proven the viability of this course in an idea intellectual terms and in practice The iranians and I mean listen to Bin Laden, he'll tell you that the Islamic fighters in Lebanon in 1983 after the us bags was bombed by iranian Operatives he looks upon that as well. We jihadists managed to kick the us out of Lebanon Right, so they take the the the inspiration at an intellectual level and they take it at a concrete level We can win And everything that's happened in the last 30 years is just confirmed that even more so when Iran is labeled the axis of evil part of the axis of evil An idea was eight years later president Bush who came out with that statement That slogan he's no longer in power and Iran is right the same people who are evil then still evil mix up No one in this country is willing to make themselves so Just to sum this up the concrete things we need to do all depend on taking an Orientation of the problem that puts our interest first and that includes identifying enemy and doing whatever it takes to defeat it and I think for Many reasons including the ones I mentioned Iran is a starting point and once you do that and you have to do it and say It's not something you do and then kind of hush it up. You have to say we're taking on Iran for these reasons and publicly state them and catalog it and expose their evil and take a stand and show that you Are morally courageous you're you're not going around in the Middle East apologizing for your doing you're saying We believe we have the right to do this and these are our reasons and when you do that All the cockroaches will begin to start Because there's nothing more than that. I mean if you take a real stand this is what we should have done I think 30 years ago They would have fled. I mean the the story of the embassy hostage shaking needs to be explored a greater length The more americans need to know this they're in the first 36 hours of the crisis Khomeini sat on his hands. He didn't want to publicly endorse the students although they were working on his at his behest And he didn't want to Repudiate them. Do you know why? He wasn't afraid. He didn't know what America would do He heard rumors and he had reason to fear that the united states The mightiest lions would roar and come after him and destroy his new islamic republic 36 hours went by And Khomeini told his people those rumors The united states cannot do a damn thing And it was 444 days later before the iranians decided it was time to give up the u.s. Hospitals, so It is to the extent to which we demonstrate our weakness and our refusal to assert our own interests That empowers them and this is camera locked in the book at length so It turns to you if you had The first thinker that uh, you could I think identify we just bought through Is augustine The the christian philosopher theologian of the what third or fourth century fourth century first century very early on Augustine is the first one to articulate What later became known as just war theory talks Aquinas built on that Is probably a little bit of better thinker. I think then in terms of his interpretation But it really comes out of a catholic tradition of Trying to apply the principles of the catholic church to warfare And there's something even contradictory right there And they basically the idea of just war theory is to come up with rules rules about war When it's when you should go to war under what conditions and how you should fight it But it comes added from that catholic tradition of Love the neighbor like yourself Turn the cheek So war is is a last resort for example is one of the principles of just warfare, but they mean last resort, you know Uh, and you can see it right now. I have to go here with the Taliban And you beg them and you ask them and you pay them and you bribe them and you give them everything Then if they still bomb you then maybe you do something about it That's the last resort and um You know proportionality and they have a whole set of principles and that idea of applying morality was a good idea If the morality you're trying to apply is a good morality might you if you apply a corrupt morality To war they need to get just war theory, which is what catholics, but if you want later on I mean in the 18th century there were some better thinkers in just war theory Coming out of europe and enlightenment But then today's lead thinker today the guy who everybody reads and everybody west point and what they study is a guy named michael walter And really the chapter that we talk about just war theories is really of course his interpretation of just war theory primarily But the whole tradition is outruistic fundamentally outruistic Michael walter whose book is taught again at all the military academy is really the guy if you want to see what just war theory is about Yeah, just one quick thing on just working It's it's notable that there's no other moral theory of war that there is so it's just war theory in any era means The culture's view of just so we criticize the view very heavily and show how destructive it is to america But that really raises questions about what kind of view of justice do we have as a culture that leads to those kinds of results And it's not a pretty picture. My position is this I am Am not interested In the internal debate in islam about what islam is and what islam isn't i don't really care I don't care what islam is or is I just care about identifying those people who want to enslave me I care about identifying that through it with islam And it might be a dominant thread it might turn out that it's Everybody it might turn out, but it's a minority. That's an empirical question Um that through it with islam what's the post surreal law on me and the ones to kill me and my children I we need to destroy them before they get that chance of doing them if we identify the enemy is islamic totalitarian and crush them What's left of islam? Would moderate would change would you know it would be something else And I don't care what it is. That's their problem. It's not mine. If their religion is a bad religion That's their problem. The point is we need to identify them and crush them The enemy is not my muslim neighbor who loves america and considers itself a muslim and Practice his version of islamic. I don't let's say his is the white version. This is the raw version. I don't care All I care about to repeat myself is these guys have said that they want to kill me They said they want to push me on me. Anyone who says those two things Is my enemy and they need to be destroyed and You know, let let islam figure out what it wants to be after that But of course you have to destroy it I mean No, I want to say something about individual rights because I think it's really I I can sort of sympathize with characterizing enemies islam sort of but as a matter of rights It's a really really wrong thing to do because what you're saying is that the government Which is the agency of force is declaring as its enemy the idea is in people's head So I just want to make very clear we say the enemy is islamic totalitarianism I stress this is a state supported militant movement So it is people who based on the ideas in their head or whatever are taking up arms against us to violate Rights we're the iron man center for individual rights. We're not the iron man center for randomly Attacking people based on ideas So the standard of when we get involved and when people are our enemies are they threatening our individual rights? And only that so the person could be a muslim He doesn't take up arms our government has absolutely nothing to say about his religion Let me just give the audience a few context setting remarks on pakistan because It is definitely one of the areas where we have a great deal to worry about from the islamic movement I mentioned that the pakistan afghanistan border is the new epic center for this But in terms of they're having free reign And as you know, you mentioned this pakistani regime has nuclear weapons And as you have read in the paper the islamists are trying to take over pakistan And then they've come within about 60 miles or a day's drive of the capital And there's reason to believe that they might well succeed There's a long history between the regime of pakistan various regimes of pakistan and islamists in afghanistan They've colluded and supported and they appear to be still in kahoops so I think the question Can be framed more generally than who's in charge of that their mugs because that's certainly a question to be worried about the question I have is Why do you even have to care about pakistan now? Why won't what happened, right? I mean The the story was that they were one of the three regimes that supported the talabat when they were in power in the 1990s And after 2001 They cut a deal Right, the deal was we'll stop supporting these islamists and we'll start supporting this so-called war on terror Right and in return for this it wasn't done out of their goodwill in return for this They received a Huge package of aid something to two or three four billion dollars, which recently was tripled now The crisis with pakistan would not exist today were not for the way that deal was made the deal was The u.s. Decided it was not going to pass judgment on pakistan It was just going to pretend that what pakistan tells us is the truth And so we didn't classify them as part of the enemy which in fact they were And instead we pretended that they were an ally And this ally took our money took your money and my money and used it to buy weapons used in cashmere and other places and to train its own people Meanwhile supporting and continuing to fund a lot of these islamist groups and to let them Rearm onto their own doses in the borderlands This went on for years and what was the response? Well, it's One of the things I mentioned about afghanistan was our forces were prevented from fighting They were held back under rules of engagement to put the security of the people in afghanistan ahead of victory This is what your own characterizing as a self-effacing approach to war Self-crippling kind of war and that applies as well to what we did with pakistan We had every right to pursue the islamists across the border and defeat them because that's what they went when we went into into afghanistan in 2001 We didn't defeat the Taliban. We just scattered them right then they fled they fled across the border And once people across the border they had immunity because we didn't want to trespass on pakistan sovereignty Well pakistan doesn't have sovereignty there because these people are its laws, right? And the problem is we approached pakistan with the same kind of self-effacing approach. We're not going to assert ourselves and say look We're not going to have to pay you to be on our side. You have to choose. You're either against this You really change your ways They didn't change their ways. They took our money and they betrayed us So that's a case where we had two kinds of failure one you failed to recognize what we're dealing with And then we compounded it by not asserting ourselves over time I mean, this was america bush's While he was an officer it's continuing today. So now we have this mess where We you know the the rhetoric is pakistan is crucial to the fight On the other hand everyone in pakistan except a couple of people hate the united states It's probably the recent poll numbers that have come out and how many do this and The pakistani people by and large despise the united states They Cooperation with us to the extent that they do cooperate. It's a betrayal the soldiers in the pakistani Military are the ones who are helping the Taliban across the border the ones are shooting down u.s. Aircraft And they're the ones who are sabotaging whatever efforts are being done That is the mess we're in and I have maintained that it is a reason as a result not taking seriously the principle self-defense and self-assertion and Our own interests because our own interests are not to become friends with and drive General shire and pretend what he's doing is really helping anything What does he do? He rounds up about 500 of these Taliban puts them in prison. Then the next day they're all released It's a photologue. That's not a war So we have this mess of Pakistan I think and this is kind of what I argue That we could do when you start dealing with the problem You go after around you started to moralize this movement Then you put Pakistan on the defensive and say you have to live up to this ultimatum You do everything in your power to defeat the ones the islamists in your borders or let us do it One of those two things has to happen and if you fail or refuse We're going to treat you as an enemy And that means there are a whole host of things we can do to severely punish the pakistani regime It doesn't mean going to war with them But we don't have to go to war with every regime that's hostile to us There's so many more things we can do with moral suasion and real real a surgeon of power So that's kind of a big context of what's gone wrong with pakistan And I think it all feeds into the same thing of how is our foreign policy Sacrifices our own self-interest over time and that's what's happening now I mean I mentioned in passing that they tripled aid of pakistan Tripled what they've already received to not do what they do what they can do I think it's a traditional thing It's not enough this game It's not it doesn't matter how many people die It's an issue of ideas If we're willing to sacrifice these thousands and do nothing Why not three million? You know, are we willing to watch Israel disappear off the face of the map of the map or that would be six million? Would that we wake up you really think so? um This is not another game. This is not let's wait for the next big terrorist attack This is an ideological game This is an issue of educate somebody asked before what do we need to do? What we need to do is educated educated educated We need to get the american people to the point We're after the next large terrorist attack. We do something by the way I suggest that one of the ways we do that is by changing our language. They're not terrorists They're Islamist utilitarians. They're enemies Terrorism is just the tactic again Iran is not Just about terrorism is about nuclear weapons. It's about, you know, defeating Israel in a war. It's a lot of different things So, you know, I really don't think you can put it this way people do not learn from experience In spite anything you've ever heard people don't learn from experience If they've got bad ideas They'll come to the same rotten conclusion after every occurrence that happens to them. They won't learn. They never will You can see the economics all the time, you know, we we get it we get crashed And we make all the same mistakes we made in the past and we get the same results So we got in the past and everybody's shocked that it didn't work this time, right? The stimulus has never worked Just an economic example stimulating economy Through government spending never will survive an economy in the way that this is just and we try to have a physical time Because ideologically or condition that that's the only solution the only solution And unless and it's not even an American consciousness. It's not even a possibility Of actually asserting ourselves and going out there and defeating them. Nobody talks like that except a few marginalized people, you know the people try to marginalize the place I know what he talks about So we need to make that part of the american consciousness. We need to make that part of the debate We need to bring up the idea. There is an enemy. It can be defeated. We need to defeat it We need to save it over and over and over again conversations So then when the next terrorist attack happens and it will happen and it doesn't matter 20 people got The makers will say Yes, there's an enemy. We need to defeat it But unless you go through that educational process They won't get to that point. They can nuke new york tomorrow. Let's say you can do goes out tomorrow in new york But who's the mind we are Sure, you know, it's probably our fault because because of what we did in york, right? We were we were mean to those people, but How do you What do you do? I mean, was it al-qaeda? Let's say it's al-qaeda. Well, who is al-qaeda? We're wrong. They're kings in pakistan So what do we do about that? We link it to the iranians Let's say we can't so we won't do anything about iran because we can't prove that it's there Nothing changes Just because something bad happens. You've got to get people thinking differently about You know the threat that we're facing Just a quick comment on that The world trade center was attacked in 2001 as we all know But it was attacked in 1993 In the plan then if you if you heard this was There was a rider truck a moving truck loaded with explosives and the plan was to topple one tower into the next It was I mean they would have killed as many if not more people in 1993 That I suggest to you it was one of the attacks in this war against us and yet There was no identification of this as part of the war. There was no identification of this as part of an ideological Movement that was behind it, which it was That is just I think the refutation of The idea that if there were another attack this would change things because Certainly a few people were injured in 1993 But it was still an attack Its impact could have been far greater. So and I there's another one more thing I want to say I really object to the view that people often have that if only there were another attack because We don't I mean unfortunately, I think there might not well be another massive attack But the implication that if only there were one and something good would happen in the sense that we would find and wake up That is not the way to think about this It's not we should not be waiting for another shoe to drop We should not be waiting for more people to die If anything if I can leave you with one more thing besides the first thing I teach you Is it? We need for there to be no more americans who die Not a single one not in the battlefield Not in a skyscraper not in a bus No way That is what the kind of foreign policy that I advocate Ames out and that's what we should aim for it's not well You know once we get to this point and people will finally wake up. They won't wake up We have to wake them up now. We have to inject the right kind of thinking into their minds And then people will wake up and realize that we've been at war for so long and they've been asleep How do you do that? I suggest there's a book in the back of the room that would continue in some small way to that endeavor Without a rest You know, there is only one area And that's the area within because think about who we're fighting for fighting a bunch of cave dwellers With no technology with nothing this should be like a three-week war Six-day war maybe Um, there's no real Threat out there. They can't be dealt with like this if we had the will to deal with it There's only one and I mean that is us that is in america. It's in our universities. It's in our schools No, but How do we deal with it is there is only one way to deal with it and that speaker But challenge the fundamentals you gotta challenge the ethics you gotta challenge the philosophy behind the ideology With all due respect micristal micristal But this is a win micristal believes in a way of fighting a war that will never ever achieve victory If only he was the killer that you think he is I mean, where's pattern? Where's macArthur? Where's uh Where is a shaman who was willing to burn one of his most loved cities the city of eclectic which he lived and which he loved But he knew that burning the planet and ravishing the south And destroying the infrastructure himself from in that war and would lead to victory He was willing to do that. We won't do it. He walkie is never working too well You know to the enemy who were brothers, right in civil war. They were brothers But he he fought for a righteous cause and he was willing to do whatever was necessary to win We don't have generals like that But what we need is to advocate philosophically for the right position and look This is not a Challenge that we're going to win overnight. This is a long term battle This is a battle to change the culture in this country to take it back Uh to take it forward if you will Uh And it's not going to be easy, but it has to do with the philosophical level and that's what these, you know Our institute is structured to do. We started high schools at university programs We're trying to get this message of last or self interest by american self assertion into All those institutions and then we'll show up There's no I don't have a one liner that'll convince your liberal friend that uh, you know It's okay for america yourself assertive in the work. You have to challenge multiculturalism. You have to attack multiculturalism. It is a Theory of ideas that is destroying the ability of americans to think That is a long term battle. They're no they're no easy ways out of it. And this is our common sense, right? The common sense is not the way We did instigate a war between sues and sheds and that that is I think one of the Issues that happened in iraq With it the great result of Liberating and bringing elections was to empower The rival sects in my country and they went at each other and started slitting throats and you know bodies to end up in morgues Um to just to go to your the main thrust of your point um I am not in favor of sending any american troops Into harm's way unless the point of their being there is to defeat the enemy now I in the book I present one possible solution and it involves some of what you're describing But I think there has to be a certain point at which what you're describing works. Let me just spell out what I think Right now we we've gotten ourselves into an impossible situation on the one hand if we just withdraw right away That hands of victory to the enemy which we will never live down They will be spinning this for generations and and and using it to to recruit and empower Is disastrous if we leave right away because of what you were talking about gandist and iraq You name it But if you send more troops in which is now the debate how many troops you are aware of how many That's just gonna put more americans in harm's way Who as I argue in the book are going in with their hands tied behind their backs You know don't just take it from me read what they say and watch the videos of troops in afghanistan and they will tell you They think it's complaint is not a lack of armor. It's not a lack of comfort It's not a lack of anything that they can be supplied with Is the number of restrictions on them and mccrystal whom you uh, you described as a whip That's probably to charity Because let me explain why He isn't one of the advocates of the current strategy, which is you go in there and you win them over with goodies You give them money Schools you show them they're better off siding with us. This is you know part of what they did in iraq to temporarily pacify But crystal is complaining about the us military when he did his review of what's been going on Is that our troops spend too much time in the healthy protecting themselves Instead of that, he should they should be out in the streets taking as many risks as the afghan people did He wants american troops to go out of their way To risk their lives for the sake of afghans So if there's anyone who advocates the policy that i argue has been destroying us Sabotage our foreign policy. He is worth it great performance on so, you know to say he's a wimp goes probably doesn't go far enough Now What about just leaving it out? I said, I think we lose either way and that's part of what you what results when you have an irrational foreign policy you get into a predicament with Afghanistan, what do we do now? If you send more troops in without the goal of victory, you're sending them to their graves for nothing But if you withdraw then you will have another Taliban regime. That's a huge threat Now, I think there's an answer to that. I don't want to leave you the impression that I think it's an impossible situation That you can't bring it up, but it's impossible on the current terms of debate Which are how much nation building are we going to do in that kind of stuff because there isn't a debate I mean the debate is we have to do nation building you have to win them over What happened to what happened to victory what happened to the end of the threat? It's not on the table And that's part of what I advocate that has to be an option It can't just be you know, we're going to play this Russian roulette and how many lives we're going to throw How many lives of americans we're going to put in harm's way in Afghanistan It's going to be well, some of us want to do 40 000, some want 30 000, some want 20 000 That is such a countless way of dealing with our policy I mean It is not our Washington's position to be disposing of these people's lives for the sake of what are in effect hostile populations So let me say what we've posed and I'll try and do it quickly Let me first challenge one point you make Hassan of course is a product of state-sponsored tourism He would have never be radicalized the way he was radicalized Saudi is building mosques in america with a radical mosque and a al-qaeda-based mosque The the the guy he communicated with in yemen is a state-sponsored terrorist I mean he is a product of state-sponsored tourism not directly but indirectly if you stop state-state sponsorship tourism People like Hassan wouldn't exist because they would be so marginalized that they wouldn't be significant Look if you went in tomorrow, what we're advocating is just to put it in blunt terms We're advocating to take the troops in Afghanistan and in uaq At least i'm advocating this Take them put them on a reading board We're going to give the reading regime 24 hours to evacuate to tehran to uaq to watha where they own a lot of land If they don't Marge those troops to tehran not to build the roads not to do anything but to destroy that regime In on the way you destroy and kill whatever's necessary to reach tehran and to win After that After that you turn to the pakistan is this what you mentioned that you say to the pakistan and see what we just did to tehran You see the dust It used to be buildings That's what will do to you if you don't stop supporting the taliban or if you don't take the taliban Get seriously and deal with it and that's it. It's over. The whole thing is over at that point The point is that you have to establish america's credibility They're able to fight and win a war but if you evacuate in afghanistan today and said Oh, you pakistanis if you do something we'll come after you They'll laugh us out. They'll say you guys have haven't stood up for yourself since world war two You've messed up korea. You've messed up vietnam. You've messed up. Every war you've been engaged in you you're evacuated Somalia you're back here at 11 you you you bought out iraq, right? We've had two cases of cash for the insurgents That's how we won that war This you know, we don't believe it. What would you say? So yes at some point you can step back and say if you Misbehave we'll thrash you but that has to be credible and the only way to make it credible. It's a threat somebody I mean, that's a tactical issue. How do you exactly do it is is a technical issue. That's not the principle is I mostly want to repeat what I said earlier, which is that Um The ideas of that if you take obama and asurad and any of these other characters They don't all they hold essentially the same ideas that most of us Guard is good. They're doing even the name of be thy brother's keeper You know society has an obligation to help the needy We as a rich country have an obligation to help the poor countries. There's no mystery here now Maybe there's some sort of psychological analog to the ideas that we accept Having certain psychological consequences as a culture. I'm not a psychologist I couldn't say but as the under an institute, we're focused on the Philosophical ideas that are out of the open and educating the public with the proper philosophical ideas as a framework as to How to look at these problems objectively how to solve them and you know, there's no mystery There's no conspiracy. There's just a lot of hard intellectual work In terms of changing the way people think about this issue and then we you know, I don't even focus on the stuff Most of the time I mostly focus on business business. It's the same thing. How do they why do they think a stimulus is a solution? Why do they always think that uh, that Greed is the problem and government is the solution The whole thing is just is an intellectual revolution to to reconceptualize to change the way We think about issues and unfortunately people think about issues in a way that's not Objective and rational and that that requires education education education as you're on says Okay I had a thought that I didn't get a chance to just say Uh briefly I promise You know you want to make the point I look only I think when he said you need to earn credibility because we we don't have it anymore um and the The vision that we put forward is not that America has to be Trigger happy or or a more younger and some people regard America. It's quite the contrary That if you show that you have the moral backbone and the self confidence just take a stand and if you do Earn that credibility you don't have to unfold to your weapon That is one of the benefits of having a certain foreign policy. So In regard to that gentleman's question about the tactics, there are many ways you can do this and Their options, but the key is to demonstrate That we will not be Affronted and we will we will tolerate no attacks on americans ever And once you have that and you've established it the other problems in the region pakistan the rest of it Those become much simpler to solve Much simpler when people around the middle east are laughing at us and listening to our president grovel and apology We have a problem with credibility. All right, because they don't take us seriously But when you have the opposite when they look up to us and then say, okay, we're gonna mess with them You know, I think that the danger is there is a danger and this is I think more so in europe than it is here The danger is that there's a backlash to the rise of sharia and the rise of slum in europe What you get is not Rational freedom loving liberty loving individual rights respecting Cultures coming about but you get a rebirth of european fascism, which I think we're all very familiar in this group with I don't take the vote about the minarets as a good sign. I think it's a bad sign Minarets are not the enemy The enemy is much weeler than that We should be able to live in a culture in which who cares if you want to build a minaret or whatever across or anything The point is that Sharia law, you know it cannot and will not exist because we believe in individual rights of freedom and liberty But they don't believe in individual rights freedom and liberty They just take the symbol and they attack it out of context and out of context of what the real threat is if the swiss Said we shouldn't fight islamic totalitarianism. It was part of that battle. We're going to take down the minarets Fine But that's saying let's not fight in the Middle East We're not certainly not going to send any troops over there. We're just going to take down the minarets You know, it's it ain't that's not the way to fight the enemy is pathetic We shouldn't be turning on ourselves. We should be turning on them. You know, I'm from israel. I still have all my family there and Israel is in a horrible situation And it's not horrible because of you want it's not horrible because the palestinians Israel is in a horrible situation because of its own intellectuals and its own people They have lost this fine. They have lost their own self-assertiveness the same as we have Israel is just a mini america if you will in that respect the difference is that america will survive you know Even in nukin new york america will survive israel won't One one nukin in israel is done Israel unless it finds a mall backbone that we be talking about unless it rejects The self-effacing ideologies will not survive it can't just look at the numbers you run You know look at look at look at what's going on under this israel needs these ideas It needs this philosophy more than the us does um, and it's it's Tragic the direction Israel is heading is a tragic direction because it's losing that even so-called right-wing government You know I used to word wins before and I was scolded because I was too moderate And I think that that is a true of me. I mean it's an hour. He's no he's no Tough guy. He's a And I was why should a dime of america's money go to any country in the world anybody anyway I mean we've got a financial crisis in the u.s They should be turning the money to us so that we can have a better life. Why is it going anyway? But certainly why should it be going to the to the enemies of the united states? But look it is a hunger in this country for alternative ideas There is a frustration in the status quo life on policy on domestic policy economics and everything This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring new better Right ideas into this culture and you know, that's what we're trying to do And I hope all of you join us in in doing just that let's go fight the real battle for this country It's out there in the streets. It's an ideological battle against a fellow americans and the battle Is a battle of words. It's not a battle of arms go out and speak that that's the kind of fight we need for